Jammer's Review

Star Trek: Voyager

"Unity"

Air date: 2/12/1997
Written by Kenneth Biller
Directed by Robert Duncan McNeill

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan

"I wonder how long their ideals will last in the face of that kind of power." — Chakotay, on the 'New Collective'

Nutshell: Quite good. A few flaws, but an intriguing premise and a fresh way of utilizing a reliable Trekkian element.

I've always liked the Borg (but then again, who hasn't?). They're the most interesting and fearsome villains that Star Trek has ever come up with—not just because they're powerful and relentless, but because they're determined to force you to join them, quashing your free will and independent thought. As a result, I went into "Unity" with high expectations; and, for the most part, I came out quite satisfied.

First a digression: It's an interesting observation that Voyager as a series still hasn't come up with a fresh, new, defining "concept" for its Delta Quadrant milieu. TNG came up with the Borg in its second season, DS9 introduced the Dominion in its second season; but here we are in season three of Voyager—and I'm still not sure where the gold is (and apparently the writers don't either). Instead, in one of its better episodes to date, Voyager falls back on a reliable piece of TNG. I'm not condemning the creators for deciding to use old material—far from it. After all, as I said last week in my review of "Blood Fever," bringing the Borg to Voyager could potentially re-energize the series if they become a regular nemesis. Still, I find it an interesting and perhaps telling sign.

"Unity" isn't a rehashed Borg episode; it takes a completely new perspective on the Borg: the inverse perspective. Usually the Borg are automatons who seek to forcibly assimilate you into their Collective. But in "Unity," Chakotay and Ensign Kaplan (Susan Patterson) land a shuttle (it doesn't crash but it does later get disassembled and thus destroyed) on a planet of warring colonists who used to be Borg and have since been broken from the Collective. Kaplan is killed in an attack by a faction of colonists within minutes of the landing. (A show of hands—who didn't know the Ensign We've Never Seen Before would be killed in the course of the episode, or, more specifically, in the course of the first scene?)

Chakotay is shot and injured in this attack, but he's rescued by a group of colonists that includes a human named Riley (Lori Hallier) and a Romulan (Ivar Brogger), among other Alpha Quadrant humanoids. All these colonists were assimilated into the Borg Collective at one point, but an electrical storm severely damaged their cube five years ago, severing them from the Collective and returning the survivors to their original, individual selves. While Chakotay uncovers this realization on the planet, Janeway and the Voyager crew—out of contact with Chakotay—finds the mostly-abandoned Borg cube adrift in space.

The story takes the standard A/B-story structure but uses it effectively. The plots seem initially unconnected, but then come together plausibly and sensibly. The early scenes of Voyager's discovery of the Borg ship are creepy and ominous. Seeing a dead Borg ship is every bit as intimidating as seeing a live one, because there's the conceivable possibility that the dead ship will become a live one.

Upon boarding the ship and finding what's left of its crew is inactive for reasons unknown, the crew muses over what could've caused a Borg ship to "die." One of the best realizations in the episode is Torres' scarily amusing line: "Maybe the Borg were defeated... by an enemy even more powerful than they were." And Janeway's dry reaction: "Continue scanning for any Borg vessels in the vicinity—as well as any other ships that might be... 'more powerful'." It's the kind of comment that's long overdue in coming. After all, the Voyager is alone out here, and if they were to run into hostile Borg or someone "more powerful," they could have a big problem on their hands.

Chakotay's problem doesn't seem as initially threatening, but it's by far more complex and meaningful. Riley, along with her close Romulan ally, explains their intentions to Chakotay to form a new "Cooperative" to end the fighting on the settlement. Before revealing the nature of this Cooperative, however, Riley and her allies must help Chakotay, who will die of his injuries unless something can be done to stop his "neural degradation" (ah the Trekkian technical jargon, how I love it!). To heal his injuries, they must use a device to mentally connect him with several others in their group—absorbing him into a small, temporary type of Borg Collective to repair his neural damage.

Chakotay does not welcome such an idea, and it's easy to see why. As Riley says herself, it's understandable for one to be skeptical; but despite how fearsome and ruthless the Borg Collective can and has proven to be, there are great advantages to being interlinked with other minds—provided it's not put to destructive use.

This is the theme of "Unity" At what cost is unity a positive option? Chakotay experiences first-hand the sorts of advantages and pleasures being connected with other minds can bring: tenfolds of knowledge, efficient communication of ideas, not to mention a closeness to those in the link that far exceeds what one could ever find outside the Collective.

That brings us to Riley's New Cooperative. She wants Chakotay to help her bring peace to the colony by retrieving and reactivating the Borg cube and sending a signal from it that would give her the ability to unite the entire colony permanently, bringing unified peace and order to it.

That's a tall order. The repercussions are unpredictable and could be disastrous. Once Janeway locates Chakotay and the colony, Riley makes an official request to the captain, which, as one would expect, is not received with enthusiasm. The colonists may perhaps be well-meaning and sincere—as Chakotay can certainly attest—but it's not simply that easy, and Kenneth Biller's teleplay wisely knows that.

Reactivating one power generator on the Borg ship could reactivate the entire ship and the remaining Borg left on it. The consequences of that are obvious. Perhaps not as obvious, but more interesting, is the question of what exactly would become of the colony once it becomes a unified whole. "Unity" raises some implicit issues that are well worth close scrutiny.

For example, why are these people so willing to give up their individuality in favor of a New Cooperative? The whole message behind the Borg up to this point has been that assimilation into their Collective is worse than death itself—because one no longer has free will or independent thought over the power of the whole. When Riley and the other assimilated Borg were separated from the Collective five years ago, they were, to use Riley's own word, free—individuals with memories of their own pasts and identities. It's interesting—very interesting indeed—seeing that after the "euphoria" of freedom wore off and the fighting ensued, that Riley's best solution became to re-assimilate the colony into a new Collective which, without the Borg-inherent intention of being a group of conquerors, she comfortably labels the "New Cooperative."

It's therefore a subtle irony that when Chakotay informs the colonists that he can't help them they force him to help anyway, taking control of his actions by sending a signal to his shuttle and hijacking his thoughts. The action finale is punchy, as the crew races—and fails—to stop Chakotay from reactivating the Borg generator—which awakens the Borg drones and the vessel.

The New Cooperative sets the Borg's auto-destruct, however, perhaps as a sign of good will (leading to one of my favorite sights: a Borg cube getting blowed up real good!). Chakotay wonders however, how long the Cooperative's ideals will last in the face of such power. I wonder as well. The ideal of oneness and group cohesion frankly strikes me as quite dangerous. That's "Unity's" payoff, and why it works so well. It seriously asks what the difference is between the Borg and the New Cooperative. Is it inevitable that the Cooperative's power will lead them to seek out victims the way the Borg do? I think it's a distinct possibility. The fact that Riley's group activates this Cooperative without the consent of most of the colony is assimilation in and by itself; the motives begin to lose their relevance.

Detracting from the overall power of the show are a few small but noteworthy details that continue to plague the series' credibility. One is the destruction of yet another shuttle. These losses just can't be ignored week after week. Either the show has to acknowledge that the crew has found a way to build new shuttles or there should be great concern over losing them. Destroying a shuttle wasn't really necessary here anyway, so why did they do it? Ugh.

Then there's the aforementioned matter of the arbitrary killing of Kaplan—also unnecessary. And, of course, there's the excessive technobabble in the final "explanation" scene and the part where the severity of Chakotay's injury is revealed. Couldn't these passages have been written without uses of such convenient-sounding gobbledygook?

There's also a glaring logistic error: Riley explains she was originally assimilated during the battle at Wolf 359. How was that possible? That ship was destroyed in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" and had nothing to do with the cube that appears in this episode. This is only one line of dialog, and it's not a major demerit, but someone wasn't paying attention.

I don't want to sound like "Unity" was a negative viewing experience, because it wasn't. It's a standout episode. The special effects are as good as I've seen them on Voyager, McNeill's direction is effective, the story is fresh and implicitly complex, the production is impressive, and the action and suspense works. This is not the best episode of Voyager, but it's among them.

This is an interesting episode. The New Cooperative could be similar to an
early stage of the Borg Collective. In the beginning people might have
joined voluntarily, the allure of the collective mind is powerful.

The New Cooperative might head down a similar path. The road to hell is
plastered with good intentions.

@Destructor, The Queen transcends all. She can change bodies and be
anywhere in the collective she wishes. And she can be replaced. Riley
behind at Wolf 359 is implausible and just plain sloppy writing. It's like
they felt they had to have a gratuitous TNG reference. Dumb.

I just finished watching Unity. I'd seen this episode before, I think, but
probably not more than once, and not since it originally aired.

When Chakotay asked the final question, about how long the Co-operative's
ideals would last in the face of that kind of power, my own mental answer
was, "probably not long."

I liked this episode, but it implied an idea which I've been thinking about
for a while now, where the Borg are concerned; namely, that some of the
people who were assimilated, genuinely liked it. To a certain extent, I
think Seven of Nine herself did, even though the circumstances surrounding
her assimilation were deeply traumatic.

My own fascination with the Borg, has brought up some of the issues and
cognitive dissonance that I have with cybernetics and transhumanism as more
general concepts. For the most part, of course, it's all utterly horrific;
and I remember one guy a while back, produced a video series of several
hours' length, which he called "Seven of Nine, and the Sexualisation of
Technology," where he basically argued that Trek and other elements of pop
culture were being used to encourage the population to want to become
cyborgs.

As Seven herself said in "Drone," however, "the lure of perfection is
strong," and related topics have been an area that I've always had an
interest in, even though I know that the potential results of such
technology would likely prove unspeakable.

Not so much an episode review; sorry for that...but it was about some ideas
which were connected with the episode, so it's not completely irrelevant.

This episode brought up a few interesting questions for me. As far as
Voyager was concerned, why not investigate the Borg Cube and try to acquire
some of their technology - Transwarp should have been quite interesting to
someone in Voyager's position. On the other hand, it shows how deeply the
events of TBOBW affected the Federation. Janeway came off as genuinely
terrified, and made decisions the way a skittish prey animal would. It was
nice to see that Janeway is still human, and Voyager is not all-powerful.

The Cooperative was interesting, but I had a problem with the
quasi-mystical telepathic borg. Weren't nanoprobes the key to the Borg's
communication and regenerative properties? That explanation is both
grounded in real science and seems to sit better with canon than
"Neural-electic blah blah blah..." I understand the writer's were probably
reluctant to inject nanoprobes into Chuckles, but that would have made an
interesting continuity concern as well.

The other thing that was intriguing about the New Collective is the
question of who was in charge. A perfectly flat democratic group mind
should not have a leader, yet the Borg derives its efficiency and power by
being a collective mind driven by the will of the Queen. I would have
liked to have understood that better, because it seems that the leaders of
the good cell would not have necessarily been able to impose order, unless
the order itself comes from the innate Borg programming...

Anyway, a good episode with the exception of the magic telepathy hokum. It
left you asking questions, which is what great sci-fi is all about.

Definitely one of the better Voyager Borg episodes before they turned into
action movies. I loved the scene where Chakotay is first connected to the
group and it starts out sounding a bit like a Vulcan mind meld but as the
voices merge it turns into the Borg voice. Chilling.

This episode could have been entitled "Leviathan" after the 17th century
book of political philosophy by Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes described the state
of nature as "Nasty, brutish and short." These people, freed from the
collective, are living in a Hobbesian state of nature, one of war of all
against all.

Hobbes favored an absolute monarch to prevent civil unrest, and felt that
while the monarch might not be perfect, anything was better than anarchy.
In the collective, there was no internal strife. Of course, they don't want
to go back to the collective, but instead think that they can use some
aspects of the group mind to provide unity without the totalitarian nature
of the Borg. In place of a monarch, they substitute the collective will.

It remains to be seen whether this will work out for them in the long run.
Majority rule without checks and balances to protect the minority is
subject to abuse, and a collective where everything is subject to the rule
of the majority is opporessive.

Of course, the Borg are not truly ruled collectively, but ruled by the
Queen. Left to their own devices, the Borg collective would "vote" to
disband, and the Queen prevents such unacceptable thoughts. But even if
this new collective only goes with the majority, majorities can go too far.
It remains to be seen whether this group will prosper or just exchange one
nightmare for another.

Since we learned in TNG that the Borg originated from somewhere in the
Delta Quadrant; it was pretty much set in stone that Voyager would come
across them. It was just a matter of time and a matter if whether any
episode pertaining to such would be plagued with the usual writing problems
inherent in this series.

Thankfully, the writers decide to make a *gasp!* thought-provoking episode
concerning the return to individuality (a la TNG's "I, Borg") and the
temptation to justify reunification through a collective for enlightened
purposes.

This is a mostly very well written piece of storytelling that actually
utilizes Voyager's potential as a series. I realize that this isn't
technically the true Borg encounter episode; as this doesn't really concern
any part of the actual collective. But it's it great start and I for one
was happy to see it.

3.5 stars.

Side note: Concerning the death of "redshirts" on ST series as a whole; I
get the fact that it has become a running gag, as it were. I would hope at
some point someone somewhere would realize it ultimately becomes an
exercise in gratuitousness and only serves to distract from the narrative
in nothing less than a negative way. The joke is over and I hope that any
future series will abandon it.

I think this episode has a lot of relevance to social media, Twitter etc.,
with everyone suddenly being plugged into everyone else's thoughts whether
they like it or not, and the resulting effects on the society (and the
direction it will take) being uncertain.

One of the reasons the Bjorn became a weak wasp sting is due to episodes
like this. Wishy washy idealist nonsense, where former Bjorn can reclaim
their humanity (etc). It's pathetic. The Bjorn were supposed to be a
deadly genocidal collective. And now they are a weak flip flop.

Question: was Chakotay's experience here *ever* followed up on? Because it
seems to me it would help give the forced Chakotay-Seven relationship a new
perspective: here's a guy who's actually *experienced* the intimacy of
being in a collective!

It is explicitly mentioned either in "Scorpion" or "The Gift" that Chakotay
remembers being in a collective consciousness which is why he ends up
being selected for the neck-thingy double cross. I don't think it's a small
matter either that the first person for whom Seven held significant
romantic feelings (besides the elf from "Unimatrix Zero"--she had forgotten
him anyway) was Chakotay.

I.e a sphere left behind to collect escape pods and return to the Delta
Quadrant? (The Wormhole aliens protecting The Sisko of course.) or a ship
or two assimilated and headed for the DQ after the cube was blowed up

It would have been more plausible for these the starfleet officers and
romulans to be the victims from the outposts along the neutral zone
referenced in the same named episode. But I guess wolf 359 sounds more
memorable